Gracious God, Let these words be more than words and give us the spirit of Christ. Amen.
The reading from the Gospel of John is inserted into the Advent season to draw attention to the familiar figure of John the Baptist; or as his title should be more aptly read as “John the Herald.” For the Evangelist John, it is the role of Herald – the messenger – that the Baptist is to be remembered and not just as the one who baptizes Jesus in the River Jordan.
As herald and forerunner, John is pointing the people towards the “one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me…” Prior to this statement, people wondered whether John himself might be the Messiah. After all, he had a big following of people. So it would be natural to have the priests and Levites ask him “Who are you?” Of course, John gives them all a resounding “No” and then announces who he is: “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness.” In this one sentence, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness,” that sums up much of the essence of John’s Gospel and crystallizes for us the meaning of this Advent season.
The use of “I am” will be used seven more times in this Gospel. Another man will use these words. They will be used by Jesus to answer other people’s similar question that was asked of John: “Who are you?” And Jesus will answer them: I am the resurrection and the life; I am the bread of life; I am the vine; and I am the light of the world. These “I am” sayings scholars call the Dominical Sayings and are self-referencing titles referring to the Messiah. Their origin comes from Exodus 3:14 when Moses asks God at the Burning Bush, “Who are you?” And, of course, we know what God says to Moses, “I am that I am.”
I am that I am. I am the Bread of Life. I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Does it seem to you this Advent that the Christian message is being lost in the dark woods of culture and society either by an overshadowing economic anxiety or a creeping seduction of deep discount sales causing people to act like cattle on the hoof? Does it seem to you that John’s statement is as true today as it was 2000 years ago? Can we still hear the herald’s thundering voice calling out to us as he did so long ago? I wonder because there are forces and points of view out there that are sidelining our Christian faith. I say this because it is not only that the John’s voice is being drowned out but so are his words.
This past week, the Oxford University Press announced that its dictionary for children is eliminating a number of words related to Christianity. Words like abbey, aisle, bishop, christen, disciple, monastery, monk, parish, pew, psalm, saint and vicar are to be replaced by words like blog, broadband, MP3 player, voicemail, attachment, database, export, chatroom, bullet point, and “cut and paste.”
The rationale being used by the dictionary editors to justify the changes is the declining church attendance and multiculturalism. Although surprising, it seems to be part of the continuing conversation among many pundits today about the decay of religion in our post-modern world.
There is post-modern point of view – a reputed post-Christian point of view - held by many that not only is Christianity declining but it is dead. In TV host, Bill Maher’s recent movie, Religulous, whose title is a riff on the words religious and ridiculous, he mocks people of faith, saying that religion is a “neurological disorder.”
His film interviews range from people at a Creation Museum in Kentucky to those who worship at a truck-stop chapel in North Carolina. In each case, he surmises that people say they are good because they want to be saved; and that for Maher, “that’s not a good reason to be religious.”
Evaluating Maher’s movie, Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe asks in a recent column the question, “Can you be good without God?” Attempting to explore this question, Jacoby cites in his column the Harvard lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, by writing,
“Doing something because God has said to do it does not make a person moral: It merely tells us that a person is a prudential believer, akin to the person who obeys the command of an all-mighty secular king… To be truly moral one should be a person of good character because it is right to be such a person.”
According to Jacoby, Dershowitz, represents a growing number of people who claim that it is not only more moral not to need God but it is also better. This line of reasoning is follows a rising and unsettling atheistic pattern these days by thinkers and writers such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins who believe that religion is a malignant force in the world. While it is true that religious fundamentalism has pushed believers of all faiths into deadly wars, encrusted prejudice, and mindless thinking, it has also elevated humanity towards righteousness, forgiveness, and service.
Such leaders in culture and society such as Maher, Dershowitz, and Hitchens need a response from the religious community. And the question for us is whether we as people of faith are giving the opponents of faith and religion an adequate answer; or, are we like John the Herald who is crying out in the cultural, economic and political wilderness of our generation?
In our Psalm today, the author writes during a time of stress how a people came through tribulation and captivity and how God restored their homes, their lives, and their nation. Their response was gratitude, “Their mouths were filled with laughter and their tongues with shouts of joy.” Unlike the psalmist, I do not hear peels of laughter or words of joy coming from the mouths today of religion’s opponents.
One thing the opponents of religion forget is the joy that comes with faith. They do not get that religious people live responsibly, serve compassionately, and care deeply for God and one another not because God demands it but because God desires it. And these atheists cannot grasp the transformative power of God to forgive, to heal and to transform.
We have heard the stories of people who forgave a murderer who killed their Amish children. I have met a woman at Christ Church whose cancer is in remission because of the prayers of the people here. And I have seen a beaten and broken African-American boxer rise from defeat and prejudice to become the lay leader of an Episcopal Cathedral. Faith elevates people with dignity to their better selves ennobling them to serve God and God’s people with a joy that the world cannot give.
You and I like John are called to be heralds. We are to point to the one who not only gives joy; but he is joy. The apostle Paul was apprehended by this joy through the Risen Christ while on the road to Damascus and he wanted to share it with everyone. In our Epistle lesson this morning from First Thessalonians – his earliest letter and therefore the earliest piece of New Testament writing – Paul proclaims the joy in Christ when he writes, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, gives thanks in all circumstances.”
In uncertain economic times like right now sometimes it is hard to hear the voice of one crying in the wilderness let alone be a voice crying out in the wilderness. It seems easier to give into sadness and surrender at this time of year. Yet, Paul reminds us “to hold fast to what is good.”
Although you may feel like you are hanging on for dear life these days, we are reminded to hold fast by remembering that your joy – God’s joy – is not dependent upon prosperity, wealth, luck or anything external. Rather, it is based upon the remarkable gift given to each of us through the Holy Spirit of being part of the life, purpose, and work of God. As with any divine gifts, it is given to us for a reason.
Isn’t interesting that among the voices in our lessons this Advent and Christmas with all the prophets and sages that we hear of an early church community in Thessalonica who discovered peace and harmony in the midst of turmoil and trouble and found the fruits of their faithfulness was this joy. I would like to think that we are like the men and women of that little fledgling Christian Church who did not know what a day would bring; yet, in faith they believed God would be with them. They dreamed the good dreams of God in an age of nightmare – and they got through their dark nights of the soul because they never felt alone nor abandoned.
The image I hold this season is the image of the Salvation Army woman who is ringing a bell. In an ad on TV she is ringing a bell in the broken places of the world: in an alley with a huddled homeless man, in a cold home with a shivering mother and child, and on the roof of a house swamped by a flood as a boat rescues people there to safety. I would like to think that this image of the bell ringer is the icon of our Christian work together.
For it places us where we should be.
It places you and me in the shadow of Christmas where the helpless and the homeless live. It places us in the shadow of Christmas where the lonely and grieving feel forgotten. It places us in the shadow of Christmas where love is born. For it is in the shadows where Christ was born and where we will find our joy; and unlike faith’s opponents, who cannot grasp this simple truth, God gives us the faith and courage to go into the shadows to find him; and it is there among the least, the last, the lost and the lonely among the most vulnerable that we find the child Christ and come to love Him again as if for the first time. Amen.
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